Now we have been creating some pretty rudimentary masks, because we've been…relying on the selection tools, which while convenient, are not Photoshop's most…powerful masking functions.…But even if we had wicked accurate masks, we would still have to rely on our…compositing skills in order to get the scene to match up.…Specifically in our case, we have these dark edges surrounding the frog.…That doesn't look natural.…This foot still does not work inside the scene.…So we're going to bump up the quality of the image like so and we're going to do…so relying almost exclusively on layer effects.…

So let me show you how that works.…I'll go ahead and switch back to the progress file which I've called Magical…happy background.psd.…We're going to start things off with this hot foot layer.…So go ahead and click on it to make it active.…Then I'm going to zoom in on the foot and it's got all kinds of problems.…Even though I spent a good five minutes trying to tweak this mask using the…Smudge tool, the edges still don't look right.…

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Released

11/4/2011

Photoshop Masking and Compositing: Fundamentals is the introductory installment of Deke McClelland's four-part series on making photorealistic compositions in Photoshop. The course shows how to make selections, refine the selections with masks, and then combine them in new ways, using layer effects, blend modes, and other techniques to create a single seamless piece of artwork. Deke introduces the Channels panel and the alpha channel, the key to masking and transparency in Photoshop; reviews the selection tools, including the Color Range tool , Quick Mask mode, and the Refine Edge command; and shows how to blend masked images so they interact naturally.